you would please turn to 1st Samuel chapter 14. We're gonna look at part of this chapter. It's a pretty lengthy chapter So we're just going to look at verses 1 through 23 this night, but it's an action chapter And it's a chapter where we see the Lord come through in a miraculous way as he does when he protects His own people and the character that's going to shine out in this chapter is Jonathan Saul's son and one of the things you'll see throughout first Samuel is there's always these also these contrasts in character. You saw this, for instance, with the young Samuel being a godly, godly even child compared to the wicked sons of the priest, Eli, Hophni, and Phinehas, who were supposed to be responsible for the worship of there at the Tabernacle, but were extorting money from people and committing acts of immorality there on sacred ground. And you'll see other contrasts as we go. But there's a real contrast between Jonathan and and his dad Saul That will be apparent as we look at the the action-oriented Jonathan and the very hesitant timid in some ways perhaps Saul so let's go to the Lord in prayer and then look at what the Lord would have for us to learn tonight and Father we do thank you and I pray God that as we look at the great Great men and women of the faith that we would do so with just an eye to see that in so many ways They're just like us. They're just regular people want to have just a regular life, but the extraordinary circumstance they find themselves and requires extraordinary faith and And we look at them and sometimes they seem bigger than life and perhaps it might even be something of a point of discouragement sometimes. We think we don't measure up to that kind of standard. I think they probably would have thought the same thing in many ways. But you, in the power of the Holy Spirit, make heroes out of ordinary people. So I pray as we look at this passage tonight, We would understand and we would be encouraged by just the the power of the Lord on a man Or a woman that is completely committed to the things of the Lord. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen We're gonna look really it's just two different kind of sections here verses 1 through 15. You see that Jonathan leads and then verses 16 through 23 you see that Israel follows and because of the actions of Jonathan this one action is they end up having an amazing, amazing victory when it appeared, when we last left off with the story, that there was going to be a complete rout and perhaps even the destruction of Israel because they were so overwhelmingly outnumbered by the Philistine armies. So let's pick up here where the day of battle has come. You'll recall Jonathan attacked the Philistine garrison at Gibeah. Philistines heard about it and the Phil and the Israelites became odious to the Philistines they stunk and they wanted just to come in and just punish the Israelites the Philistines wanted to come in and punish the Israelites because of that and they had huge companies of chariots and of horsemen and a footmen so much so that they divided their companies into three large groups to go in and attack Israel and Saul was down just to a few hundred men most of whom didn't even have arms and I mean they had arms, you know, I mean they they'd have spears and uh, yeah that would have been Anyway, uh, they they they lacked they lacked swords and spears and that kind of thing because uh israel had been reduced to serfdom Uh, they were not even allowed to have a blacksmith So even just to get your hoe sharpened you had to go to a philistine blacksmith and pay an exorbitant amount of money Because they didn't want them to be able to defend themselves so that they could control them. So It's a pretty grim situation that we left off with and more and more people are leaving the control of King Saul and they're hiding in the mountains and that sort of thing. So we pick up with that situation. Now the day came that Jonathan, the son of Saul, said to the young man who was carrying his armor, come and let us cross over to the Philistine garrison. That is on the other side. But he did not tell his father. Saul was staying in the outskirts of Gibeah under the pomegranate tree, which is in Migron. And the people who were with him were about 600 men. And Ahijah, the son of Ahitub, Ichabod's brother, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eli the priest of the Lord at Shiloh, was wearing an ephod. And the people did not know that Jonathan had gone. Between the passes by which Jonathan sought to cross over to the Philistine garrison, there was a sharp crag on one side and a sharp crag on the other side. And the name of one was Bozes and the other one was Sina. And one crag rose on the north opposite of Michmash and the other on the south opposite Gibeah. Jen Jonison said to the young man who was carrying his armor, come and let us cross over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. Perhaps the Lord will work for us for the Lord is not restrained to save by many or by few. His armor bearer said to him, do all that is in your heart, turn yourself, And here I am with you according to your desire. Then Jonathan said, behold, we will cross over to the men and reveal ourselves to them. But if they say to us, wait until we come to you, then we will stand in our place and not go up to them. But if they say, come up to us, then we will go up, for the Lord has given them into our hands, and this shall be the sign to us. when both of them revealed themselves to the garrison of the philistines the philistines said behold hebrews are coming out of the holes which they have hidden themselves so the men of the garrison hailed jonathan and his armor bearer and said come up to us and we will tell you something and jonathan said to his armor bearer come up after me for the lord has given them into the hands of israel Then Jonathan climbed up on his hands and feet with his armor-bearer behind him and they fell before Jonathan, his armor-bearer put some to death after him. That first slaughter which Jonathan and his armor-bearer made was about 20 men within about a half furrow in the acre of land. And there was trembling in the camp, and in the field, and among all the people. Even the garrison and the raiders trembled, and the earthquake, so that it became a great trembling." So here we have Jonathan coming in on the scene. Again, we had met him before with a military escapade. And one of the things you kind of get a sense of with Jonathan, he's got kind of a taste for adventure. He's the kind of little boy that drives a mother, you know to prayer, you know He's the kind of little boy that said hey looky what we can do kind of boy And so he looks over there. He sees all the people cowering He sees his dad kind of getting as far away as he can surrounded by 600 people with pretty pathetic weapons he decides oh I've had about enough of this." And he decides to go do some mountain climbing and go attack the Philistines. So it's a very, very bold move here. And especially, again, keep an idea of this comparison, this contrast between he and his own dad. But as one commentator said, Jonathan is a model, a shining model of Christian manhood faithful friendship and devoted service to the cause of the Lord. And he will become very dear to us even as we go on because of the kind of man Jonathan was. Jonathan loved David. And he loved David despite the fact that David would actually, in a sense, take over the throne. Jonathan would lose the throne to David. And yet, because David was God's man, he was Jonathan's man, too. So he was one of these selfless, brave servants who just trusted the Lord, even in the face of a terrible situation. Remember, again, the situation. He sees the Philistines over there. There are thousands of Philistines. And he and his armor bearer go up to go attack them. But when it comes to God and God's on your side, thousands don't matter. It's just completely irrelevant. If he's got God on his side, he's got much more than thousands. So they decide that he's going to go take them on. He just sort of says this. He doesn't appear to be musing about this whole thing or strategizing about this thing. He just kind of gets a little fed up. And he decides it's just time for some courage here, and a little bit of chutzpah, and let's go take out some of these, and he thinks very lowly of them, he calls them uncircumcised, you know, they're just the filthy scum of the earth, pagans that shouldn't be in our land. But notice this, it says, and the author goes to some trouble to point this out, he didn't tell his father. He did this on his own. Now, on one hand, he is not, in a sense, subjecting himself to the authority of his father or to the king. On the other hand, I think that shows that there's some tension between Jonathan and Saul, and it's tension that has to do with character. as we will see as the story progresses throughout this thing. He may have been kind of a typical teenager too that just wants to go out and have a good time. You know, dad can have the keys to the chariot and go kill some Philistines, that kind of thing. So Jonathan goes up there. He was on, whereas Saul was on the outskirts of Gibeah. I mean, that idea of outskirts, he's kind of far away under this pomegranate tree. And we're thinking, what's with the pomegranate tree? But locations then, they didn't have giant mile markers or sometimes didn't even have roads or anything. So they would often identify a location with a particular geographic feature or a great tree. So evidently this was a pretty famous pomegranate tree. and they're there. Many of the people were kind of hiding in the caves of this craggy area there as he's staying out there. And Jonathan had his armor bearer with him, just a single person with him, another warrior that was with him that would help him. But Saul here had a priest with him, and that priest had an ephod. And again, this kind of goes back to the previous story. Notice the detail that we get on who this priest is. Who this priest is related to he is this priest is the nephew of where is the glory of Ichabod? You remember going back to that scene the Philistines had just run roughshod all over Israel Israel decides to fight back by taking the Ark of the Covenant out into battle to use it as kind of a talisman or a good luck charm and the Philistines whoop up on the Israelites they actually captured the Ark of the Covenant and and Hophni and Phineas in the judgment of God, they're such corrupt, evil priests, they're dead. A runner comes in and tells Eli, Eli dies, breaks his neck, and then Phineas' wife goes into labor, and then she starts to die, and they got this baby boy, and she says, name him Ichabod. The glory has departed Israel. Well, here is Saul hanging out with the nephew of the glory has departed. So here's King Saul that can't even hold on to his kingdom. His kingdom seems to be falling apart. He's only got 600 people around, hanging out with the nephew of Gloria's departed. So the question is, where's the glory? What's God going to do about this? So it's pretty wonderful drama as we kind of see the setup here of what's going on here. As one writer says, his own royal glory gone, what else would we expect from Saul than to be with a relative of glory gone? You get kind of an idea of the geography there. There's a sharp crag on one side and a sharp crag on the other side. This valley is just a few miles north of Israel. I mean, it's kind of like our folks who went to Israel, I don't know that you went to this location, but you could go to this location. I mean, they would know exactly where this is, the name of these crags. So again, our Bible stories are grounded in human history and human events and on real places in planet Earth. They're not fable, they're not fiction, they're not myth. And he goes up to these crags, so he had this really hilly, craggy area, and that's probably why Saul was up in that area. The mountains, the crags, the rocks would have prevented the Philistines from using their chariots. It would have prevented them from having a large assault line. Perhaps they could defend themselves for some time up in this rocky hill country, that sort of thing. And we even know the names of these crags. I never thought about naming a crag. But there's bozes and sinner. They basically mean slippery and thorny. Okay. This is not a nice place It's a dangerous place and and this is the kind of place that God is going to use to humble people and to and to exalt someone like Jonathan and I love what Jonathan says here Jonathan didn't he's just not he's not a macho brute. He's not being presumptive He says perhaps the Lord will fight for us. Perhaps he will fight for us because you know what he may not He may not It's kind of like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They said, you know, the Lord is able to save us. And even if he doesn't, we're not going to bow down to this statue. And that's kind of where Jonathan's attitude is. Let's go across. Let's take a step of faith. But God is not beholding to support us, but perhaps he will. So let's move across. But he says this, Folks, I don't know, that's probably the most important lesson here. We look at the leadership of Jonathan, but this is really the point. Only a man after God's own heart, a person like Jonathan, could remember this kind of thing, because we are always looking at resources, aren't we? We're almost consumed with resources. Our family can't do this. Our church can't do this. Christianity in America can't do this. We're always looking at limited resources. Resources are all controlled by God. The devil's resources are controlled by God. So God is not restrained to be saved by many or by few. The other thing about Jonathan is he studied his Bible. I mean he's already got, even at this point in time some 3,000 years ago, he's got story after story after story of how God is not constrained by resources. And there will be more following him. One of the best examples is after Jonathan, after David, Sennacheribs, Assyrians besieged Jerusalem, they've already captured all the rest of Judah, they're surrounding Jerusalem and they taunt God and then they wake up in the morning and 185,000 of Assyrian soldiers had been killed by one angel. Sennacherib goes back to Assyria, and he's murdered up there. So God relieves the siege without a single arrow coming from the wall of Jerusalem. You see, Jonathan would have already known about the Red Sea crossing. I mean, talk about drama there. You're finally getting out. You finally got all your stuff. You come in, and there's a sea in front of you, and here comes Pharaoh's army behind you. What are we going to do? We are doomed. There is absolutely nothing that can happen, and God goes and parts the sea. I mean, who would have thought about God parting the sea? That wouldn't have been a category I was praying for. And he just parts the sea, and they just go through the sea, and then he brings the sea back down on top of the enemy. So Jonathan would have known that. Same God, right? Jericho. How did they win the battle Jericho? By marching around and blowing trumpets for seven days. And then God flattened the wall. Okay? Jonathan would have known about that. Ehud. He assassinated King Eglon and Moab all by himself. Led a revolt that got the Moabites off of Israel's back. Shamgar killed 600 Philistines with an ox goad. That's a lot of Philistines with an ox goad. An ox goad is just kind of a long stick that you would poke the ox to get him to move ahead and everything like that. So obviously it wasn't the ox goad. He could have killed him with a Tupperware. But God is not restrained by many or by few. And then of course Gideon, probably the best example. And it's interesting because this area is probably the area where a lot of Israelites were hiding during the times of Gideon, you remember? Gideon you had the people of the east the kings of the east they would come on to the land like locusts and they would just take everything Then so that normal life had just ceased to exist and we even find Gideon the hero of the story Hiding in a winepress trying to get his little bit of grain Hiding it from the the people of the east right and then God says Oh valiant one. He's like Where it's like when three stooges someone comes and says hello gentlemen and three students look back and they who's the gentleman You had to be there. So they find Gideon hiding and he ends up leading this amazing victory. Remember how that started? Somehow he got 32,000 Israelites. God says it was too many. So he said anybody who's afraid, leave. That would not be the thing to say before a battle. So guess what? Two-thirds of them were afraid and they leave and he's left with a portion of what he had. Then he says there's still too many. Go down by the river and see who drinks like a dog and who doesn't ends up with 300 people and what does he equip them with? Torches and trumpets, right? They surround the enemy at night during the night shift They blow the tour that they show the torches and they blow the trumpets and the enemy ends up killing each other and they have a great victory. Jonathan had that. We have that. Folks, the same God that we worship is the God that gave victory to Gideon and Ehud and Shamgar and Jericho and Red Sea and all of them. So Jonathan actually believed the Bible. And he thought, now's the time of absolute desperation. God can do it again. If not, I'll die. But I'll die in faith. Better be dying in faith than cowering up under the pomegranate tree, right? So, think about what keeps us from believing as Jonathan did. It's very often our lack of resources. I said, Jonathan, courage is also sort of a foreshadow of the kind of courage that David had. You know, David's going to come up in a few chapters and face down Goliath. And David did the same kind of thing. He said, okay, so Jonathan probably looked at Gideon and the Red Sea and Shamgar and all that. David said, hey, listen, I'm a shepherd. I've killed lions and I've killed bears with this rock. I can kill this lug head. This uncircumcised Philistine who's taunting the armies of the living God. So we're going to see those kind of faith examples coming together. And this is one reason why Jonathan and David become such fast friends. Scripture even says that their souls were knit together. That's a great great description of true friendship. Their souls were knit together because both of them were people who trusted in the Lord. So we can see here that Jonathan believes even in what Jesus said, with God all things are possible, right? William Carey the great father of modern mission said attempts great things for God expect great things from God and he did and he saw thousands saved in Chinese missions and that kind of thing began and so forth so that kind of thing so and notice that it's not just Jonathan his armor-bearer who we don't even know his name I mean we don't even know his name and that's you know what that would suit him fine because he wants God to get the glory. He says do all this in your heart and then if you turn around you'll find that I'm there. I mean what a what a bud you know he's going to go to Jonathan into this impossible situations But he also tests the Lord. He's not being foolish. He's not throwing his life. He says here, there's gonna be kind of a test. He has a little bit of a fleece, like remember Gideon laid a fleece down to see whether he was being presumptive or this is really the Lord's will, and the Lord accommodated that. And he basically says, if they say, come up to us, that'll be the sign. That'll be the sign that That we should go forward so they go up there's about 20 of the soldiers that are up there Uh, and that he ends up getting a very great victory. So notice the effort too that he took to get up there I mean just the climb was courageous enough He's literally climbing on his hands and feet up this giant crag to go fight the enemies on the top It kind of reminds me of that scene in prince's bride you know where the Was it Humperdinck? No, that's the good guy, the prince. No, he's not the prince. He's the Dread Pirate Roberts. Climbs up all those cliffs to go fight the swordsmen on the top of the mountain. That's kind of what Jonathan's doing here. And the Philistines are just sort of watching him. He climbs down, then he comes out in an open area. They see him. They kind of call out. They're mocking. Oh, look, the Israelites are coming out of their caves. Look at this guy. What are these two guys going to do? And the two guys keep coming, and they're like, OK, well, we'll give them a little lesson. And then Jonathan just starts chopping and kills 20 of them. There may have been some advantages with Jonathan, kind of like when the Greeks fought the Persians, they might have been confined to a small area so they couldn't use all 20 people. That's sort of irrelevant. It could have been 20, it could have been 200, it could have been 2,000, because God was with Jonathan at this point in time. The other thing that we see about Jonathan is he didn't have to know the answer to his prayer. He stepped out on faith, doing the right thing, and trusting the Lord the entire time and seeing what would happen. So now we see after this great victory that God actually joins in too. God actually brings an earthquake. There was a psychological victory here. The Philistines had no idea that they could get whooped up on by these Jews, and they were terrified. And there's terror kind of going on throughout the camp, and then God actually starts shaking the ground that they're under. So that just increases the psychological disadvantage now of the Philistines. So we're seeing a real shifting of the turn of the battle here. And then we see here at Israel's followers in verses 16 through 23. Now Saul's watchman in Gibeah of Benjamin looked and behold the multitude that is of the Philistines melted away and they went here and there. Saul said to the people who were with him number now and see who has gone out from us and when they had numbered behold Jonathan his armor-bearer were not there. Then Saul said to Ahijah, Bring the ark of God here, for the ark of God was at that time with the sons of Israel. While Saul talked to the priest, the commotion of the camp of the Philistines continued and increased. So Saul said to the priest, Withdraw your hand. Then Saul and all the people who were with him rallied and came to the battle, and behold, every man's sword was against his fellow. And there was great confusion. Now the Hebrews who were with the Philistines previously, who went up with them all around in the camp, even they also turned to be with the Israelites who were with Saul and Jonathan. When all the men of Israel who had hidden themselves in the hill country of Ephraim heard that the Philistines had fled, even they also pursued them closely in battle. So the Lord delivered Israel that day, and the battle spread beyond Beth-Avon. So you see here, there was this great mass of Philistines, intimidating number of Philistines, in great companies with chariots and everything. So it was like all of a sudden, the idea is that they just sort of melted away. melted away. The solid mass became kind of a liquid ooze and it was uncontrollable and everybody's running around in just great confusion because God caused confusion. So Saul, you know, Saul had just been rebuked because he didn't do the right thing spiritually. He didn't wait for Samuel to offer the sacrifice. He jumped the gun and offered the sacrifice. So Saul almost is overly cautious about religious things now. So he's trying to figure out what's going on there. Most commanders would say now's an opportunity to seize the initiative. Everybody's in confusion, but he wants the ephod to come over. He wants the ark to come. He wants the priest to perform some religious ceremony and try to determine God's will. And God is showing him his will all over the battlefield. So eventually he says, stay your hand, don't worry about it, forget the whole Ephod thing, grab a sword, let's go whoop up on some Philistines here. So they go on over, they begin to fight the Philistines. And the fear caused the Philistines to actually even kill one another. Well again, we saw this in Gideon, didn't we? The Philistines are so terrified they're starting to kill each other. The other little insight that we have in this story is that there were some Hebrews that had turned and were with the Philistines or had been forced into the army of the Philistines. So they had a bunch of Hebrews and all of a sudden the Hebrews are back in the company of the Philistines. They see what's happening. They're probably armed. They're supposed to be helping the Philistines. They turn on their captors. And they start fighting the philistines so that's going to add to the confusion You can't you can't turn to the back or to the front you got hebrews crazy hebrews going all over the place and then the philistines just start to break and uh and start uh to uh to just leave and try to get back to the coast and that sort of thing so uh basically, I love the ending here, that the Lord delivered Israel that day. It was the Lord that delivered Israel that day. Did he use Jonathan? Did he use Saul? He did, but it was the Lord that delivered Israel. So, what Jonathan knew could happen, and that God could fight with many or a few, actually did happen. He saved Israel by a few. Now if you compare this ending with the way we left in the last sermon on this, in the last chapter, which looked like an absolute destruction of Israel was about to take place, it's really phenomenal. But that's because we, and we get all anxious even reading these stories because we forget the Lord's in here. We forget that he's part of the solution. So it's the same God that we have today. So as we get overwhelmed with just how debased our culture has become, we start worrying about perhaps our failing bodies or our failing finances. We get worked up and all uptight about where everything's going. Folks, if you put God back into the picture, there's just no anxiety, right? There's no worry and there's no reason why we can't say that God can save by many or by few. Father, we thank you for the faith that comes to us through a 3,000-year-old episode of our God being faithful. This defies military logic, because military logic doesn't consider you. So we ask God that we would never leave you out of the equation, that we would always consider that faith in God is actually the primary thing that we are to operate on. And let us be like Jonathan. Let us be like Jonathan, to have that kind of faith that steps out in prayer and in faith and just expects God to come through. Without presumptiveness, we need to be willing to suffer for that, but also with the holy confidence that you will come through for your name's sake and for your people. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.